Obama: 'If I am not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?'

By Ben Smith

03/10/08 01:34 PM EDT

My colleague Carrie Budoff Brown e-mails from Columbus, Miss., with Obama's response to the Clintons' flotation of the notion that he could be her veep: scorn.

COLUMBUS, Miss -- Sen. Barack Obama delivered an animated rebuke today of suggestions from the Clintons in recent days that he could run as her vice president.

“Now first of all with all due respect, with all due respect," he said here during a town hall meeting. "I won twice as many states as Sen. Clinton. I won more of the popular vote than Sen. Clinton. I have more delegates than Sen. Clinton. So I don’t’ know how someone in second place can offer the vice presidency to someone in first place. If I was in second place I could understand but I am in first place right now.

He referenced comments from Bill Clinton in 1992 that his “most important criteria” for vice president was that person must be ready to be commander in chief.

“They have been spending the last two or three weeks” arguing that he is not ready to be commander in chief, Obama said.

“I don’t understand. If I am not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?” Obama asked the crowd, which gave him a standing ovation during his defense. “I don’t understand.”

“You can’t say he is not ready on day one, then you want him to be your vice president,” Obama continued. “I just want everybody to absolutely clear: I am not running for vice president. I am running to be president of the United States of America.”

Obama was responding to comments from Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson on a conference call earlier today, in which he suggested that Obama could pass the "threshold" and become commander in chief material this summer.

"Senator Clinton will not choose any candidate who has not at the time of choosing passed the national security threshold. But we have a long way to go until Denver, and it's not something she's prepared to rule out at this point," he said.